Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace in London on September 7,1533.  Her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, were hoping for a son as an heir to the throne and were unhappy with the birth of a daughter.  When she was only two years old her mother was beheaded for adultery, and Elizabeth was exiled from court.  She was later placed under the protection of Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth wife, and was educated in the same household as her half-brother, Edward.  They were both raised Protestant.  The well-known scholar Roger Ascham later served as her tutor, and he educated her as potential heir to the throne instead of as an unimportant daughter of the monarch.  Elizabeth went through severe training in Greek, Latin, rhetoric and philosophy and she was an intellectually gifted student. 

Edward VI succeeded his father in 1547 at the young age of nine.  Because of her position as a member of the royal family, Elizabeth became a pawn in the plots of the nobles who governed in the boy’s name.  One of them proposed o Elizabeth two separate times.  When her Roman Catholic half-sister, Mary I, inherited the crown in 1553, Elizabeth encountered different dangers.  She was now sought out to lead Protestant conspiracies, despite the fact that she supported Mary’s inheritance to the crown and attendance of Catholic services.  In 1554 Mary imprisoned Elizabeth in the tower of London, briefly threatened to have her executed, and then placed her under house arrest.  Elizabeth lived quietly at her family’s country home north of London until she became queen upon her sister’s death in 1558.  Elizabeth’s experiences during her childhood and youth helped her develop sharp political instincts, which allowed her to skillfully balance noble fractions and court favorites during her long reign.